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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26094250">gave me the blues and then purple-pink skies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_i_fall/pseuds/still_i_fall'>still_i_fall</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Society (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Celebrity, F/M, Fluff, This is pure fluff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:41:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,191</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26094250</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_i_fall/pseuds/still_i_fall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>His smile turns from nervous to beaming in the blink of an eye. It’s the type of smile she could write a million different songs about. It’s the type of smile she <i>wants</i> to write a million different songs about.</p><p>-</p><p>
  <i>or harry’s an actor, and allie writes songs</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>132</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>gave me the blues and then purple-pink skies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>so.</p><p>the show got cancelled and i wrote this. to cope.</p><p>warning: this is pretty much pure fluff. i just couldn't help myself.</p><p>(title from <i>invisible string</i> by taylor swift. <i>folklore</i> is The hallie album, and i think i'll always think of them while listening to it.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There are a million different moments in which all of this begins. </p><p>Here is one.</p><p>-</p><p>She kisses Will at her going away party.</p><p>It’s not the party her parents threw her; that one was on a Friday night and ended before eleven o’clock. Becca didn’t spend the night, and Will and Sam both had to leave early. Take-out was set up in the kitchen buffet style, and the second-best plates were taken out of the cabinet. Allie wore a dress that almost reached her knees, and her aunts and uncles all slipped her checks after they drank glasses of almost-expensive wine.</p><p>Again, that’s not the party she kisses Will at.</p><p>Becca sets something up at the campground near Minas Pond. Someone somehow gets a keg, and they all drink out of blue solo cups because that’s always been the sort of cliché Allie’s wanted to be.</p><p>People are home from college, people who probably only barely know her name. They all congratulate her on getting out of West Ham anyway, and she feels this sort of warm pride, the type that develops deep in your chest and expands outward until it runs out of places to go.</p><p>She downs cups of the cheap wine Gwen brought. And then cups of the cheap beer Sam brought. She dances with Becca to Doja Cat, and posts clips of the party on a private snapchat story.</p><p>It’s all fun.</p><p>Will arrives a little late, just before the first people begin to leave. He has a job; a real job, an actual job that he has to go to. To make money. He likes to pretend that she doesn’t understand that. </p><p>Anyway.</p><p>He arrives late, and she runs up to him as he drops his bike onto the ground, and he catches her in his arms, and she kisses him before she can think it through, before she can stop and realize that <i>maybe this is a bad idea.</i></p><p>(He’s her best friend. But she wants more. She wants to take him with her across the country and to get him a job at some tiny café while she writes silly songs and fulfills all her wildest dreams. It’s selfish, at best, but that doesn’t fucking matter.)</p><p>She kisses him. And he doesn’t kiss her back because <i>that’s not how I feel about you, Allie</i> which hurts more than anything else—it hurts how she read everything wrong, how she let him lead her on because it <i>made him feel good about himself.</i> </p><p>She doesn’t cry until later, and he doesn’t talk to her for the rest of the party. And he doesn’t say good-bye when she leaves for the airport, or call when she arrives in LA.</p><p>All of that hurts too.</p><p>-</p><p>Or maybe it starts before that.</p><p>-</p><p>Her uncle’s college roommate is the head of a large record label. A name brand sort of record label. A popular record label full of popular artists.</p><p>That never mattered before.</p><p>Only, just as winter fades—those annual, colorful flowers pop up out of the ground in the front yard, lining the space under that oak tree that’s sat there for forever—Allie writes a song.</p><p>Honestly, her writing a song is something that’s always seemed sort of inevitable. </p><p>She took hours of music lessons as a child, can play the guitar and the piano and a passing amount of cello and violin. And she can sing, has a voice that, arguably, doesn’t sound <i>bad.</i></p><p>And she has feelings, so many fucking feelings, bottled up and pushed deep down, hidden away under <i>layers</i> and <i>layers</i> of—of something. So, yeah, the song thing has always seemed inevitable in a way that felt so incredibly unavoidable. </p><p>She just didn’t think the song would sound… <i>good.</i></p><p>It’s all about the end of childhood—all her thoughts and feelings condensed into three soft minutes, backed by acoustic guitar and posted on Soundcloud late at night while she’s not really thinking.</p><p>Ten thousand people listen to it in less than three days, which feels like a shit-ton of people, more people than she can really, properly comprehend. It makes her a little dizzy, but also makes her feel happy, incredibly happy, like she accomplished <i>something,</i> something real, something tangible. People relate to what she’s saying; they find comfort in her words.</p><p>So, she posts another song. And then another. And another.</p><p>And, then, a little over a month before school ends, right after she turns eighteen, her uncle’s friend quietly signs her onto the label, and Allie starts feeling like <i>this is when her life begins.</i></p><p>(It takes her up until graduation to convince her parents to let her move out to LA instead of going to NYU as planned. She prepares two separate PowerPoint presentations and writes some sappy song that makes her dad cry.</p><p>She tells them that if this music thing doesn’t work out within a year, she’ll move straight back home and enroll at UConn. All of that is a lie. They don’t need to know that, though.</p><p>This is her dream, and Allie Pressman isn’t one to just <i>give-up</i> on dreams.)</p><p>-</p><p>Or.</p><p>Maybe how it starts isn’t the part that matters. Maybe, instead, the important bit is what happens next.</p><p>--</p><p>LA is just alright.</p><p>She lives out on the east side, in a shoebox studio apartment with hardwood floors that sag in certain places. The walls are painted an egg-shell color that bores her to death, so she hangs up prints she buys online with the money she was supposed to spend on college.</p><p>There’s no AC, so she freezes water bottles and tucks them under her legs and writes angsty music about that one boy back home who broke her heart.</p><p>Cassandra finds all of this very sad.</p><p>“You turned down NYU—a world class education—to live <i>here</i>?” she says, three times three slightly different ways.</p><p>Yes. Yes, she did.</p><p>“I like it here,” Allie tells her, pleadingly, asking—begging—for Cassandra to like it too. For Cassandra to approve. Because her older sister’s opinion still matters just a little too much to her. Maybe it always will.</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>While Cassandra visits, they spend entire days out on the beach and hiking in sports bras up and down the trails nearby and dinging up the Prius—the one their dad drove across the country for her—while trying (and failing) to parallel park.</p><p>Cassandra sits beside her on her bed while a box fan spins in the window and frozen water bottles rest underneath their legs. Allie teaches her how to play the guitar, and Cassandra learns with this raw sort of determination, plucking at the strings until her fingers bleed. Allie sings along, a combination of messy gibberish and halfway decent lyrics that might actually be a part of something someday.</p><p>“You’re so good at this,” Cassandra whispers, almost reverently, the second the lights switch off on her last night on the West Coast. “At being alone. And being away from home. And at doing the things you want to do. You’re so fucking brave, Allie.”</p><p>Oh.</p><p>Oh fuck.</p><p>This is all very emotional.</p><p>“Cassie,” Allie whispers back, soft and maybe just a little bit tearful. Or a lot bit tearful. Maybe. “You’re my favorite person in the world. You know that, right?”</p><p>“You’re mine too.”</p><p>Cassandra leaves with band aids over her middle and pointer fingers on her right hand. Allie waves good-bye from the drop off area at LAX, until Cassandra’s too far past the glass to see and the person in the car behind her has honked twice.</p><p>With Cassandra gone, Allie feels this sharp sort of loneliness. The high of moving out here, of being alone and properly independent for the first time ever, is fading away, leaving this gaping hole in its wake.</p><p>The box fan hums. The water bottles melt. Allie lays on her bed and stares at her stucco ceiling.</p><p>And, with a start, she realizes that there’s only really one person she wants to talk to right now. And he’s gone, somewhere far away, in a place in his life already where he doesn’t feel it necessary to respond to her calls or texts.</p><p>She writes three songs in the days after Cassandra leaves, typed out hastily in the notes app of her phone or on the paper in that journal her dad bought her forever ago, scribbled out words and cramped handwriting that tends to veer just a little bit sideways.</p><p>She plays them for her label on a Wednesday in early July.</p><p>Everyone seems to love them, wanting more just like it, but still allowing her a sort of creative freedom she thought wasn’t possible. Wasn’t real.</p><p>She writes more lyrics about growing up as a shadow to someone bigger and brighter and maybe <i>better</i> in all the ways that matter. And she writes about the sort of friendships that seems larger than life, and about falling for someone who just doesn’t feel the same, and a lot about what it feels like to realize that your childhood, that everything you’ve ever really known, is coming to an end.</p><p>Allie sings at an open mic somewhere downtown. And then at a café in Silver Lake and a coffee shop near Westwood. Her following grows. She releases an EP and Rolling Stone Magazine writes this short little piece on her, and she hears one of her songs on the radio which makes her cry so fucking hard.</p><p>Allie thinks that things are going to work out.</p><p>-</p><p>Or maybe the important bit is when she meets someone new.</p><p>-</p><p>In the wake of her EP release, Allie performs at larger and larger venues, attracting more people than she thought would ever listen to her music, what still, often, feels like no more than just silly songs about growing up.</p><p>She’s proud, undeniably proud, but want something bigger than just a five song EP.</p><p>She wants what comes next. She wants an album.</p><p> So, in between shows, she works to put together an actual album, something clear and thought out and reflective of her thoughts and feelings and experiences.</p><p>Her label introduces her to this young, supposedly genius, producer.</p><p>Elle Tomkins.</p><p>They immediately hit it off.</p><p>Elle is quiet and soft and has this ear for the sort production that only adds to the lyrics, adds meaning behind messages and lends to creating the sort of vivid images behind the songs that Allie once thought only she would see.</p><p>“So I’m not ruining anything?” Elle asks quietly, the two of them sitting on the floor of the studio, a pizza from that place down the street between them.</p><p>Allie spits out a laugh, shocked, more than anything else, and that makes Elle smile a bit, down at the floor. “God no, Elle. It’s perfect. You’re making everything so much better.”</p><p>“I’ve never worked on a project like this,” she tells Allie, tossing her crust back into the box. “I just wanna make sure that it’s good, and that you’re happy with it.”</p><p>“It’s better than I ever thought it could be. It’s perfect.”</p><p>Elle will come back to Allie’s apartment, and they’ll sit and write and talk about their lives before. </p><p>“My parents divorced when I was little,” Elle tells Allie. “My dad moved out to the East Coast, and my mom stayed here. I almost went to live with him; I got into this ballet school in New York, but I turned it down.”</p><p>“You did ballet?”</p><p>“Yeah, for years. I was good, I think. It was just… a lot. And one day I decided I didn’t want it to be my entire life anymore.”</p><p>They share rocky road ice cream, eating it straight out of the tub because Allie’s three bowls are all dirty, and they’re both too lazy to actually wash them. And they’ll watch shitty movies just to make fun of them and fill online shopping carts with too-expensive clothing that they’ll never actually buy and make very loud, somewhat delirious promises to one another to <i>never go vegan.</i></p><p>In Elle, Allie finds her first LA friend.</p><p>Between recording sessions, they’ll take film photos in front of pretty houses in the expensive LA neighborhoods, wasting gas and posing dramatically for photos and brainstorming Instagram captions as if it’s the most important thing in the world.</p><p>Her friends back home like to gush to Allie about how cool it is that she’s “famous.” Which isn’t necessarily true, not yet. She only has thirty thousand followers on Instagram, which is nothing, really, in the grand scheme of things.</p><p>She’s not famous, and Elle doesn’t treat her like she is.</p><p>There’s no party the night they finish the album, called <i>Childhood’s End,</i> a name that Allie goes back and forth between passionately loving and passionately hating on a near daily basis. Which Elle says is a good thing, because <i>at least she’s passionate about it.</i></p><p>There’s no party, but Elle uses her fake ID and buys them the third most expensive champagne Whole Foods sells.</p><p>It’s nice.</p><p>-</p><p>What comes next is possibly the best part.</p><p>-</p><p>
  <b>Praise for <i>Childhood’s End</i>:</b>
</p><p>““I just miss my best friend,” is a line repeated three times throughout nineteen-year-old Allie Pressman’s stellar debut album. It’s a line interspersed between clear moments of melancholy and euphoria, placed in the silence left behind, a reminder of something that feels, to her, so far gone. It’s a collection of songs about intimacy, reveling in a lack, in the loneliness that comes with growing up and running from familiarity.</p><p>As Pressman says good-bye to her childhood, she also says good-by to “the one boy I worry I’ve ever loved.” It’s a seemingly bold statement, out of place among the uncertainty of the rest of “Minas Pond,” a song filled more with regret than longing, incapsulated best within the lyrics: “Will forever wish I just did one thing right/ But I ran away from home.” It’s a theme that prevails throughout the rest of the album, that rigid dichotomy between hope and fear for the future. And it’s a theme that Pressman embraces well, leaving <i>Childhood’s End</i> as one of the year’s best.”</p><p>- Rolling Stone Magazine</p><p> </p><p>“Somehow possessing a voice that is already incredibly clear, Allie Pressman seems to skip those awkward in-between steps that often accompany the beginning of a career, those moments where success seems so far off. And, somehow, she seems all the better for it, her attention focused more on the people and places she’s left behind rather than any of those common dreams of fame. “It’s not fair,” she sings in a strained voice on the album’s opener, “that you get to decide what we are.” It’s an album that rarely falters, full of a sweeping sort of production (in large part thanks to newcomer Elle Tomkins) and the kind of imagery that defines careers, marking Pressman as someone we should’ve began paying attention to a long time ago.”</p><p>- NME</p><p> </p><p>“Allie Pressman is an artist who has built her songs around those delicate moments before and after everything falls apart. Little does she dwell on the moment itself, pushing it aside and concentrating rather on what remains. “But the truth is,” she sings on “I Think I’ll Go,” a beautifully haunting track that marks the mid-way point of the album, “all of my best nights were with you.”</p><p><i>Childhood’s End</i> creates an artist working on her own separate plane, already fully formed, defining the rules of the space she whole-heartedly inhabits. “I know I’m not the hero/ So what am I?” goes a couplet on the closing track, “The Poseidon Adventure,” named for the 1978 film. Across the song, she questions her reasoning behind leaving home, singing of anxiety and homesickness paralleled by that initial feeling of freedom. It leaves you with a whisper, ending an album that is in equal parts quietly strange and incredibly contemplative.”</p><p>- Pitchfork</p><p>-</p><p>The album’s release is marked with a level of attention Allie’s not quite used to.</p><p>At her first show, the venue is nearly packed. She passes half a million followers on Instagram, and over three million people listen to her monthly on Spotify.</p><p>It’s all so <i>fucking</i> insane.</p><p>She meets up with someone from Variety for an interview the morning after <i>Childhood’s End</i> comes out. Allie’s half asleep, but that doesn’t really seem to hit her, no room between the excitement surrounding her life.</p><p>She’s asked questions like:</p><p>How do you like LA?</p><p>And.</p><p>What comes next?</p><p>She’s asked about her favorite venues to play and her inspirations and the meaning behind specific lyrics.</p><p>And she answers every question happily, sipping on a coffee and smiling so wide it hurts sometimes. </p><p>Because this <i>real</i>. This is her life.</p><p>-</p><p>Potentially, though, more than anyone else, her life changes the most when she meets <i>him</i>.</p><p>-</p><p>She’s introduced to Harry Bingham not even five minutes before a soundcheck for her TV debut, a performance on a network late-night show.</p><p>She is more than a little bit star struck.</p><p>But. Like. It’s a completely reasonable amount of starstruck. Because he’s Harry <i>fucking</i> Bingham.</p><p>He’s been twitter’s <i>#whiteboyofthemonth</i> for three months running. Which is probably some sort of record. Probably. He was nominated for an Emmy at age sixteen for his performance in some critically acclaimed HBO miniseries, and then went to rehab for supposed addiction problems soon after. </p><p>And then he came back—somehow <i>hotter</i> than before?—sporting an easy looking smirk and that sort of effortlessly messy hair. He got cast in a film entitled “Just an Ugly Thought” and won an Oscar.</p><p>So. Yeah. She’s a little bit star struck.</p><p>Especially when he’s smiling down at her, shaking her hand and telling her his name as if it’s something she doesn’t already know.</p><p>“Allie Pressman,” she says, and his head tilts to the side as he says:</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>Oh. Fuck. God, she swears she can hear her heart beating in her chest.</p><p>“Loved <i>Childhood’s End</i>,” he continues. “It was… It made me a little sad, but in a good way.”</p><p>“A good way?” she repeats, breathier than she intends. He nods. “That’s… good? I mean, <i>Just an Ugly Thought</i> definitely made me cry, so, I guess we’re even.”</p><p>He stares over at her, his eyes flitting around her face, and she’s not really sure what he’s searching for, not really sure what she so desperately wants to ask, wants to figure him out, wants to put together all the loose puzzle pieces until an image forms.</p><p>“Yeah,” he finally says, and it forces her breath to catch traitorously in her throat, “I guess we are.”</p><p>He stays for the soundcheck, hanging out near the back of the room and catching her eye whenever she looks up. She can feel her heart beating out of her chest. It’s not actually a bad feeling.</p><p>In the end, their knees brush while they’re interviewed, sitting side by side on a too small couch. </p><p>“<i>The Poseidon Adventure</i> is my favorite song right now,” he says, turning to her during a commercial break. It means more than it probably should that he waited until the cameras were off to tell her that. Again, her heart soars.</p><p>“Thanks,” she says softly, and he shrugs, still looking at her curiously, still trying to figure something out.</p><p>In the end, while she walks from her dressing room to the plain, black car waiting for her out back, he asks for her number. And he looks almost… nervous? And it’s strange, how he wears his nerves, one hand running through his hair until it sticks up, the other offering her his phone. She thinks he might be shaking. She thinks that she most definitely <i>is</i> shaking.</p><p>“Sure,” she breathes out, taking his phone from him. His smile turns from nervous to beaming in the blink of an eye. It’s the type of smile she could write a million different songs about. It’s the type of smile she <i>wants</i> to write a million different songs about.</p><p>“So I’ll see you again, Pressman?” he asks, and that familiar air of confidence has returned to his voice.</p><p>“Yeah, Bingham, you’ll see me again.”</p><p>She isn’t exactly sure when they decided on referring to the other person by their last name, or why him calling her “Pressman” makes her smile so much. She could probably write a million songs about that too.</p><p>He stands watching while she slips into the car, waving good-bye. She wonders how many other girls he treats like this. She wonders if they all feel this special.</p><p>And when Will LeClair calls her, the morning after her TV debut, she doesn’t answer. </p><p>Harry is one of the reasons for this. That, she will admit.</p><p>Here’s another reason:</p><p>It’s six in the fucking morning. And that tells her one thing above all else: He’s not really thinking about her.</p><p>He’d been her best friend for two years and not once during those two years was she ever happy to be awake early in the morning. And now she’s moved across the country, to completely different time zone, and she just wants to know what thoughts are and are not going through his mind when he finally decides to <i>fucking call her.</i></p><p>Really. She would like to know.</p><p>Because she wrote an entire album, wrote songs about a boy she thinks she might’ve once loved, wrote an entire album about a boy so deeply interwoven with her thoughts and feelings about childhood and the fleetingness of everything she’s ever known. And she’s <i>moved on,</i> just like he did before she gained a proper following. And it’s just not <i>fair</i> that he’s the one who gets to set all the terms regarding their friendship.</p><p>But.</p><p>Whatever.</p><p>All of that stops mattering when, at noon, Harry Bingham asks if she’s free for lunch.</p><p>-</p><p>And, while the start is <i>important,</i> sometimes everything in between is just more…</p><p>Fun.</p><p>-</p><p>Neither of them is actually able to make time for the lunch.</p><p>They’re both just too busy—him with promoting his new film and her with promoting the album. They do text, though, nearly daily, about anything and everything that comes to mind. </p><p>
  <i>[1:28 pm] Harry: I think you should write a song about coffee</i>
</p><p>
  <i>[1:28 pm] Allie: bold of you to assume I haven’t already</i>
</p><p>
  <i>[1:29 pm] Allie: “don’t know what I’d do without you/ god, I love coffee”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>[1:30 pm] Harry: catchy</i>
</p><p>
  <i>[1:30 pm] Harry: you’ll have to sing it to me sometime, pressman</i>
</p><p>
  <i>[1:30 pm] Harry: I think it’s one of those things you have to hear in person to really appreciate</i>
</p><p>
  <i>[1:31 pm] Allie: definitely</i>
</p><p>He’ll tweet at her (he only recently remembered the password to his twitter. He finds the site somewhat confusing and is known to go on there only once every three months, tweeting something random and then dipping) and comment on Instagram posts and talk about her music during press interviews like it’s part of his job.</p><p>(It <i>isn’t</i> part of his job, by the way.)</p><p>Allie is very flattered.</p><p>The next time they see each other in person isn’t until one of those industry parties a little over two weeks later.</p><p>She’s wearing this yellow dress a designer gifted her, feels a little bit like a princess.</p><p>And it’s one of those parties that’s filled with people who are already established, already well known. Allie almost feels out of place, like a fresh face surrounded by effervescent sort of familiarity.</p><p>Then she spots him.</p><p>Well.</p><p>He spots her first and is walking in her direction when she turns around and sees him.</p><p>And his smile is so bright, like he’s <i>happy</i> to see her, and that pushes a sort of rush through her that she can’t quite describe but wants to be able to describe so desperately. Maybe she’ll spend the rest of her life searching for the right words. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.</p><p>“Allie Pressman?” he calls out, loud enough that a few people turn to stare, turn to smile. It makes her smile too.</p><p>“It’s nice to see you again, Bingham.”</p><p>“You too, Pressman. You look nice.”</p><p>She shrugs, trying to hide how flattered she is even as she blushes a pale pink. “Oh, this old thing…?”</p><p>He laughs, and she downs the rest of her champagne, and he laughs some more even as she pulls his glass right out of his hands.</p><p>And she takes a sip from his champagne flute, only it’s not champagne, but instead…</p><p>Sprite?</p><p>“I don’t really drink,” he offers as an explanation, almost sheepishly, when he sees the confusion painted so clearly on her face. “Had some problems with it in the past.”</p><p>She pauses for a brief moment before saying, “I’ve always been more of a Pepsi girl myself, but I feel like Sprite is very respectable.”</p><p>He stares at her curiously, again searching for something. “Thanks, Allie.” She shrugs. He nods. “It’s getting a little stuff in here. Do you wanna…?”</p><p>“Sure.”</p><p>She follows him out the front doors, depositing their glasses on a table nearby. And then they’re standing outside the party, and then he’s grabbing her hand and tugging her down to sit on the front steps. She slips off her heels, and he loosens his tie around his neck. The air is almost too cold, but not quite.</p><p>They sit in silence for a moment. And, then—</p><p>“I don’t know how you do it,” he says, pushing past the quiet.</p><p>“Do what?”</p><p>“Write,” he says, and there’s a sort of reverence in his tone. “You write all of this music, and it just…” It’s like he doesn’t think she’s real, like he can’t believe that it’s <i>her</i> he’s talking to.</p><p>Like she’s someone special.</p><p>“I just don’t know how you do it,” he finally repeats.</p><p>“Well, I don’t know how you do it either, bringing other people’s words to life. You build characters out of nothing. It’s just as amazing.”</p><p>She can’t quite place the look in his eyes now, either, but she likes it just as much. And she likes him. A lot.</p><p>“I actually think I need to get going,” she says after a moment, after catching a glimpse of the time on her phone. “I’m playing a show out in New York; have an early morning flight.”</p><p>“Oh,” he breathes out. And, then: “But I’ll see you again?”</p><p>She nods. “Yeah.”</p><p><i>Again</i> ends up being just under two months after that. </p><p>Allie’s just finished touring around the country, playing at different venues for different crowds, and hearing thousands of people sing her lyrics back to her, the words she wrote while lying in bed or on the couch on top of frozen water bottles. </p><p>She’s back in LA, just finished performing her last show of the tour, when she runs into him backstage. </p><p>Well. </p><p>Maybe <i>run into</i> isn’t the right way to put it see as she gave him the backstage passes. Seeing as she told him to come. </p><p>Seeing has he told her he would come.</p><p>(They spend two months flirting online and over Facetime and text. It’s fun, more than anything else, makes her feel light, light enough that she could float up into the sky at any moment.)</p><p>“A bit funny how we keep running into each other, Pressman,” he jokes, and she wraps her arms around him and pulls him in for a hug.</p><p>“It probably means something,” she says into his shoulder with a half laugh. </p><p>He pulls away, that smile still bright on his face. She’s spent the last two months looking for just the right words to describe it with. She’s not sure she’s found them yet. “You busy after this?”</p><p>She blinks up at him. “Why?”</p><p>“I wanna take you somewhere.”</p><p>She bites down on the inside of her lip, trying to think about her schedule, but, honestly, it doesn’t really matter because—“Give me twenty minutes?”</p><p>Harry beams over at her. “Okay.”</p><p>She changes out of her clothes and pulls her hair up and out of her face and packs a bag while telling someone where she’s off to. And then she runs out back and slips into Harry’s expensive looking car.</p><p>He takes her to the beach.</p><p>They both slip off their shoes and walk close to the water, the moon shining down on them like they’re in a scene in a movie. He’s holding her hand tight in his, and she doesn’t want him to let go.</p><p>They slow to a stop at some point, facing out at the ocean, far enough back that the water doesn’t reach them but close enough to still see it all clearly.</p><p>“What’s so special about this place?” Allie asks after a long moment of quiet.</p><p>He shrugs. “Nothing, really. It’s just nice. And people don’t recognize you as much when it’s dark out.”</p><p>“It’s weird,” she admits softly, her toes digging into the sand. “I got recognized three times yesterday at the airport. They all said that they loved my music, and they asked for photos with me. And today I got followed by the paparazzi for an hour before my show. And… I don’t know. I just never thought that this was something that would happen.”</p><p>“You and me, Pressman… we’re in the same boat,” he says, and that phrase makes her laugh, and that makes him laugh too. “I just mean—I get it, and that I’m always here if you need to talk.”</p><p>Oh.</p><p>Oh God.</p><p>Maybe she’s not thinking. Maybe she is. Maybe that isn’t the part that matters as she leans in closer to him, kissing him not because it feels like the next step, but…</p><p>Because it’s what she wants to do.</p><p>“That was,” she starts as the pull apart, “that was okay, right?”</p><p>Harry blinks over at her, something like surprise and shock, and, oh God, her heart is beating so loud and so fast, and—“Yeah,” he says, “that was okay.”</p><p>They end up driving back to his place because it’s late and it’s closer than hers. Nothing really happens expect the two of them falling asleep on his couch while some old black and white film plays in the background.</p><p>It’s nice.</p><p>-</p><p>What comes next is only meant to propel the story forward.</p><p>-</p><p>They spend the next week together, walking through Silver Lake in big sunglasses and drinking nine-dollar coffees. They’re spotted a few times, but mostly left alone, people taking their videos and photos from afar.</p><p>Dating rumors circulate. Neither address them. Harry does, however, tweet, rather cryptically, <i>his and her boat shoes</i> to which Allie has no response. Because. Excuse her. Boat shoes? No. </p><p>She sleeps over at Harry’s place two nights in a row before he needs to fly up to Vancouver for the weekend for some re-shoots and she needs a change of clothes.</p><p>Her apartment feels like some distant past now, outdated, a picture of her life <i>before.</i> She keeps meaning to move but can never seem to find the time. God, there are still water bottles in her freezer.</p><p>Harry’s place has central air. And a dishwasher. And a washer dryer unit. All very fancy.</p><p>She flips through an old song book—that journal her dad bought her forever ago—and stares down at the black ink and all the words that didn’t end up being used. She could probably find places for them now, fit them into other songs, craft choruses out the pieces she left behind.</p><p>Weirdly, though, none of that feels right.</p><p>She has a new life to write about, new experiences. A new boy. These words captured a time when things were different. And Allie doesn’t dwell on the past, not anymore.</p><p>While she’s calling Elle, to talk about next steps and new sounds and directions, someone buzzes into her apartment.</p><p>“One sec, Elle. I think my take-out just got here.” she says into the phone, setting it down on the counter. And, then, into the intercom: “You can just leave it downstairs; I’ll come grab it.”</p><p>“Allie?” the voice says. “Allie, It’s Will.”</p><p>Will? </p><p>Oh. <i>Will.</i></p><p>What the fuck.</p><p>Her heart stops and then starts again, and the breath that was knocked out of her returns, all so quickly she can barely register any of it. “How did you get my address?”</p><p>“Your parents gave it to me,” he answers, and, God, she’s really going to have to talk to them about that because this feels like a <i>major</i> invasion of privacy. “Can you just buzz me in?”</p><p>She breathes in and out and pushes the little button to let him in and tells Elle that she’s going to have to call her back.</p><p>She cannot believe this is happening. Mentally, she prepares a list of things she wants to say to him. Really, though, she can only think of one thing.</p><p>
  <i>You’re a year too late.</i>
</p><p>He knock on the front door, and she opens it slowly, moving to the side as he steps into the room. He looks around, like he’s surprised, surprised that this is where she’s living. In the corner of the room, the box fan hums. His eyes settle on that for a moment, and she doesn’t know what to say.</p><p>Finally, “What are you doing here?”</p><p>He shrugs. “I wanted to see you, Allie,” he says, like that’s a simple thing, like it hasn’t been forever since they last talked. Like he didn’t cut her out of his life.</p><p>“So you flew out to LA. To see me?”</p><p>He nods. “I mean… yeah. You released an album and didn’t even tell me about it, and that feels like something we should probably talk about.”</p><p>What? What the fuck did he just say?</p><p>“Why would I tell you about it? They’re all <i>my</i> songs, <i>my</i> words. You’re not involved in any of it. You have no claim to anything I’ve written.”</p><p>“Because they’re about me,” he argues, and she <i>really</i> can’t believe this is happening. She should move. If she’d just moved (and not told her parents, which might just end up being the go to choice from here on out) none of this would be happening.</p><p>Which would be nice.</p><p>“No, Will, the album is about <i>me.</i> Not you,” she says firmly, forcefully.</p><p>He sighs. Pauses. Thinks. “I miss you, Allie.”</p><p>Oh fuck no.</p><p>“That’s not fair, Will.”</p><p>“What’s not fair?” he gapes.</p><p>“This,” she gestures between them. “This isn’t fair. It’s not fair that <i>you</i> get decide what are based on what’s convenient to you. It’s been over a year since we last talked. I’ve moved on.”</p><p>“Allie…” he starts, his voice suddenly something soft. But her heart doesn’t beat loud in her chest, and the world around her doesn’t grow brighter.</p><p>“I’ve moved on,” she repeats. “And I’m pretty sure you have too. So if you wanna grab coffee, or something, and talk, catch up a little bit, that’s fine, but I’m done talking about the album with you. If you want to hear me talk about it, then you can watch one of the interviews I’ve done.”</p><p>His eyes go wide, but, then—“Sure, Allie. Let’s get coffee.”</p><p>Coffee only ends up being an hour-long commitment. Will talks at length about the culinary institute he’s applied for, and she’s proud. Really. She is.</p><p>But she doesn’t invite him back to her apartment, and he doesn’t try to ask that she does.</p><p>Harry texts her that he misses her, and she texts back that she misses him too.</p><p>And then she writes.</p><p>-</p><p>Everything settles into a familiar pattern. Eventually.</p><p>-</p><p>Harry comes back from Vancouver. Allie all but moves into his place. They don’t really talk about it—though maybe they should?—but it’s sort of unspoken, this new change that both of them like.</p><p>As summer fades into fall, he’ll spend days reading scripts while she writes sappy lyrics about falling in love.</p><p>“Any of those about me?” he asks jokingly, and she looks up at him, looks up at the way his eyes are all lit up, looks up at the crinkle in his smile, everything bright and happy.</p><p>“Yeah,” she says, without really thinking. “I Think they’re all about you, Bingham.”</p><p>“Oh,” he breathes out, his lips parting, surprise painted over his features for a half-a-second, colored in by the frankness of her words. “Good.”</p><p>She rolls her eyes. “Grab me that guitar and I’ll sing you something.”</p><p>He hands it to her and settles in beside her at the table. And she sings.</p><p>It’s song she wrote recently, still missing a few lyrics in the less important places. It’s about coincidence and chance and nights out on the beach.</p><p>And she thinks that he might be crying by the time she reaches the last chorus, and, oh God, she—</p><p>“I love you,” she whispers, the words falling out of her mouth before she can stop them. She’s not sure why she’d <i>want</i> to stop them. They feel so right.</p><p>He’s looking at her like she’s the only thing in the world that matter. One day she’ll find the right words to describe him, to describe the way he makes her feel. She will.</p><p>“I love you too, Allie.”</p><p>A smile breaks free across her face</p><p>She plays him three songs, and he kisses her hard when she’s done, and she laughs this twinkling sort of light laugh that she’s found she only really has when she’s with him.</p><p>He makes them dinner.</p><p>She’s not sure she’s ever fit with someone so well.</p><p>Their actions become routine, him off shooting in front of greenscreens, her off to the side with a journal, humming lyrics and melodies into her phone. Or, her off on stage singing all the songs she can’t stop writing, him off in the audience, in the roped off area for family and friends, being the person she smiles at while she sings.</p><p>She whispers I love you into the crook of his neck, and he tweets it out to the world without context. His Instagram fills with pictures of her captioned with things like <i>Oh to be an overpriced coffee held by @allie.pressman</i> and <i>when she writes songs about you&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;.</i> They always make her smile for a half-second too long, which makes him beam with this sort of pride and happiness that’s infectious.</p><p>Life is good. And then it gets better.</p><p>Because a week before Thanksgiving, two days before she’s set to fly home, she’s nominated for five Grammys. </p><p>Five.</p><p>She cries happy tears into Harry’s shoulder, and he smiles and laughs and tells her that she <i>deserves it.</i> And she doesn’t realize that that’s exactly what she needs to hear until he says it.</p><p>“You wanna come as my date?” she asks, and she already knows the answer. It’s obvious.</p><p>“‘Course I do.”</p><p>He drives her to the airport and kisses her in the drop-off lane for long enough that the car behind them honks. He flips them off, and she laughs and promises to call the second she lands.</p><p>In West Ham, her parents show her off around town, telling anyone who’ll listen that their daughter is a famous musician. They own two separate copies of her album on vinyl, and her dad tells her that he knows every word to every song.</p><p>It’s overwhelming, but… nice.</p><p>She and Cassandra lay on her childhood bed, staring up the glow-in-the-dark stars they stuck up onto the ceiling when they were little. They barely glow now. They’re still comforting.</p><p>“I’m really proud of you, Al,” her sister says, squeezing her hand. “I always knew that you could do it.”</p><p>“Thanks, Cass.”</p><p>Suddenly, the bed shifts as Cassandra sits up. “Now,” she says, “when am I going to meet this Harry guy everyone says you’re dating… are you dating him?”</p><p>Allie pauses. Well. “Yeah, we’re dating. And you can meet him next time you fly out to visit,” she says. “You guys are a lot alike, actually.”</p><p>On Thanksgiving, she eats dry turkey and talks with her cousins and sings for her family while everyone sits in the front room. She flies back two days later and gets paparazzied at the airport when Harry picks her up.</p><p>She wears a pair of checkered sunglasses he gave to her forever ago. She holds on tight to him.</p><p>At the Grammys, she wears an orange dress, and Harry leads her through the press like it’s second nature to him. They avoid the questions that seem too personal, but she talks at length about excited she is to be there.</p><p>“It’s an honor just to be nominated,” she says, once, twice, probably at least three times. “For people to listen to <i>Childhood’s End</i> and think that it’s worthy of a Grammy is just… it’s insane to me.”</p><p>She performs “The Poseidon Adventure” for the largest crowd she’s ever seen, made up of her idols, of people she’s been listening to her entire life. It’s thrilling, a sort of rush she might be chasing for the rest of her life.</p><p>It’s not a bad thing to chase.</p><p>She almost cries when she wins Best New Artist, and her speech is a complete mess but also everything she wanted to say.</p><p>“I wrote <i>Childhood’s End</i> because I had something to say, and I needed to say it. I never imagined that this many people would ever listen to it. So a huge thank you to my family—my mom and dad and sister who never stopped believing in me. And Elle Tomkins, of course, my first real friend out in LA. This album wouldn’t sound the way it does without you.”</p><p>Allie pauses, near the end, shaking and holding onto the award like it’s a lifeline. She just can’t believe this is happening. This is <i>real.</i></p><p>“And to Harry Bingham,” she finally says. “You make everything brighter, and for that, I am forever grateful.”</p><p>At the end of the night, while she’s high off adrenaline and nerves, Harry squeezes her hand three times while they announce the nominees for Album of the Year.</p><p>In all honestly, winning that award is somewhat anti-climactic when compared to the rest of the night. It’s like she’s all out of shock and surprise, drained. </p><p>Harry kisses her when they announce <i>Childhood’s End</i> as the winner, and she pulls Elle with her up to the stage. They take turns thanking people, and Allie tears up a little bit as she tells the people watching, the people home, to always follow their dreams.</p><p>If nothing else, the Grammys force her to take a step back and reflect on what her life has become. God, not too long ago she was so fucking scared, scared of the future, scared of the decisions she had made and the paths they could lead her down. Scared that she would never not be alone.</p><p>The morning after, at ten AM, while Allie stands in the kitchen, in one of Harry’s shirts, making a cup of coffee, Will calls.</p><p>She answers.</p><p>“I just wanted to say congratulations,” he tells her, and it sounds so incredibly genuine.</p><p>She smiles. “Thanks.”</p><p>Harry takes her along with him to the Golden Globes and the Oscars, and she sits and smiles and cries while he wins awards and thanks her in speeches.</p><p>“I can’t imagine my life without you,” he says, and she realizes that she can’t either.</p><p>It should be a startling thought.</p><p>It’s not.</p><p>After awards’ season is over, as winter becomes spring, things settle down once more.</p><p>She and Harry spend more time at the beach, collecting tans and sunburns and freckles. </p><p>One night, while the two of them lie in bed, the moon shining into the room through the curtains, he turns to her, leaning in even closer. “I’m shooting something in Europe over the summer,” he tells her. <i>Summer</i> is still months away. She pauses. “Do want to come with me?”</p><p>Oh.</p><p><i>Oh.</i> He wants to spend his future with her.</p><p>She doesn’t hesitate before saying, “I’d love to.”</p><p>-</p><p>Here’s how it all comes to an end.</p><p>-</p><p>In Italy, they sit on the beach and stare out at the ocean.</p><p>“It’s pretty out here,” Allie comments.</p><p>“It’s not the same as LA,” Harry says, and she rolls her eyes.</p><p>“You’re such a California boy,” she says. “LA’s, like, half of your personality.”</p><p>He makes a face at her. “You know, I’m from Connecticut originally.” he tells her lightly.</p><p>She pauses. “Really?”</p><p>“Yeah. I was born in this tiny town near New Haven. It’s called West Ham, I think. We moved when I was eight, right after my dad died”</p><p>Oh.</p><p>
  <i>Oh.</i>
</p><p>There’s a moment of quiet while she stares over at him, thinking about a million what-if’s, of other worlds and other versions of the two of them. Maybe they don’t always find each other. Maybe they do.</p><p>Then, suddenly, swiftly, she laughs.</p><p>He stares at her, his head tilted to the side, his confusion palatable, and her breath catches in her throat. “What?” he asks, watching her.</p><p>She shrugs a little, her smile so bright, probably a bit like the one he’s always wearing. “It’s just…” she lets out another soft laugh. “That’s where I grew up.”</p><p>He lets out this shocked sort of half laugh, blinking over at her like he doesn’t really believe it. “That’s crazy.”</p><p>“Yeah,” she murmurs.</p><p>“Imagine If I’d never left,” he says thoughtfully. “Everything would’ve been so different.”</p><p>She knows that he’s right. Really, but…</p><p>Still, Allie can’t help thinking that this is how it was always meant to be, in every lifetime and every universe— him and her.</p><p>Together.</p><p>-</p><p>(What comes after.)</p><p>-</p><p>
  <b>Praise for <i>Allie’s Rules</i>:</b>
</p><p>“On Allie Pressman’s sophomore effort, the aptly titled <i>Allie’s Rules</i>, everything revolves around her as attempts to find her footing in this “strange new world” (the musing way she refers to fame on the opening track “Like a Fucking God.”). Rarely does she falter as she explores both a new sound and a new space to inhabit, seemingly falling in love right before our very eyes.</p><p>It’s difficult not to find bits of Pressman’s boyfriend, Harry Bingham, scatted throughout the record. On “Ugly Thought,”—a clear reference to Bingham’s film of the same title—she sings, “I don’t know who I am in this new place/ Lucky to have found you.” It’s a sort of softness that wasn’t seen on her debut, a sort of softness that she embraces, collecting the quiet moments and pushing them out into the world as full exploration as to what it’s like to become famous while falling in love.”</p><p>- The New York Times</p><p> </p><p>“Alle Pressman captures emotions like no other, and that is evident more than ever before on <i>Allie’s Rules</i>, a masterful collection of songs exploring the trials and tribulations of fame and falling in love, intersecting the two topics in a both natural and artful sort of way.</p><p>Somewhere in the middle, on “Other Worlds,” she explores feelings of nostalgia and regret, an emotional low within an album quietly and carefully incredibly bright and optimistic. Still, with soft lilt to her voice, she sings, “Think I would’ve always found my way here.”</p><p>Pressman builds off the success of <i>Childhood’s End</i>, creating a world truly and fully her own. It’s a world you want to be a part of, a place you want to inhabit, and that aids in making this easily one of the best albums of the decade.”</p><p>- Consequence of Sound</p><p> </p><p>“<i>Allie’s Rules</i> is a rudely perfect album, both introspective and grounded at the same time, riding that fine line between too much and not enough in the effortless sort of way that people have already come to expect from twenty-one-year-old Allie Pressman. It’s quietly self-assured, full of lyrics that make you pause, lyrics that one can’t help but readily embrace. “I think I’d like to hold onto you for forever,” she sings, proving that she doesn’t have to be sad to write a killer album.</p><p>More than anything, it’s those soft moments that hold your attention for the longest. Pressman is once again aided by Elle Tomkins, and the two of them create a world fraught with sudden change and full of half hidden discoveries, the type that leave a person feeling as if <i>they</i> were the ones to accomplish something beautiful. “You said we were in the same boat/ And I thought ‘why not the same car,’” Pressman sings, with a sort of earnestness not seen on her first album. It’s hard to imagine the song not being inspired by Harry Bingham and that black Maserati the two of them have been spotted riding around LA in. </p><p>If nothing else, <i>Allie’s Rules</i> has proven what we all hoped would be true; that, rather than it being some one in a million sort of fluke, <i>Childhood’s End</i> incited the beginning of something rather amazing—the rise to the sort of artist you can’t help but watch for, as they only appear once in a generation.”</p><p>-  Pitchfork</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hope you liked it! this was incredibly self-indulgent, but also a lot of fun to write.</p><p> <br/><a href="https://in-my-head-i-do-everything-right.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a><br/><a href="https://twitter.com/hallieownsme">twitter</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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